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Tammy Afriat:
Hey, and welcome back to the Playground Talks podcast. I'm Tammy Afriat A parent coach and at your host, and I'm here to help you navigate nowadays challenges with your kids. So, We had about five episode around boundaries, and today I want to touch a new topic, which is what's your communication style? Because it's not only that we set the boundaries, but there is a lot of impact of the way we communicate and we set those boundaries. For example, there is a huge different, if I'm saying, Hey, I need some quiet time now, versus if I'm saying, I have to finish up writing this email. So I need another 10 minutes and then we can hang out together. So when we talk about communication style, it's not only what we say, but it's also the tone we were using, how fast we say it. It also goes to your facial expressions and your body language. And to be more specific, I always like to talk about the scale, which in one side of the scale, you can be a passive communicator. You might have a child that rather , chooses not to speak, not to advocate for himself, avoid a conflict. You might think of yourself. Those things might resonate with yourself as being a passive communicator Who's mostly choosing to not talk. Then in the other side of it, we have the aggressive communicator. Those are the kids that sometimes we call them bossy or leaders or strong wheels. And again, we also know some adults that we have like that, that when they have something, they would be more impulsive, tending to use a higher peach or use their voice strongly in a higher volume, it many times perceive when someone talk aggressively, as if he's mad or angry or something like that. And then in the middle, if we talk about this scale again, we can talk about assertive speaking, which is when you. Express whatever you want, whatever you need or whatever it is on your mind. You're not afraid of the conflict, but you handle it in a very objective way.. So ideally we want to communicate everything to our child from assertive perspective. I always think about it. That when we talk a assertively, we have an intention of what we're saying. We know what's the vision of the message that we wanna say. We are responding versus reacting. So it's not that they said something and it was triggering for us, so we said that, but we were actually. Already I'm thinking about, we already have the script. That's really helpful for me. So let's go over some of those script that I tend to use a lot. for example, let's take material boundary. Okay. So just today I have my water bottle, the one that I'm using the whole day long. It. Prevent from me having a headache and that's a healthy style I'm trying to implement. So my daughter forgot her water bottle at her friend's house and she wanted to take my water bottle. And I was like, you know what? That's my water bottle and I needed to prevent from having a headache. So please leave it to me. And find another water bottle we have in the house. You can use the other one. So as you can see, I didn't say, how dare you take my water bottle, which is another way to set the boundary where. The message is just the same. Don't take my water bottle. But in fact, I gave the reason why I want to have my own water bottle. I set the boundary and I gave her another options, which honestly she could think about it herself, I chose to help her and. Guide her into being more flexible with finding other solutions then taking my water bottle. Another example in terms of time boundary could be it's now it's summertime, right? And then the kids. Wants to go to a movie or they want to hang out with friends, or they want to have sleepover and you know, they have so many things they wanna do and they don't get that we, the adults still have work to do. So my perspective on that is, well, it's my responsibility to make sure you have some stuff to do to entertain you to, so you can grow your skill. But also you can be a little bit independent, especially when you are five and six years old. You can spend an hour without me doing something with you. So let's say a kid comes to you and say, Hey mommy, let's play together. Hey mommy, . Take me to the movie or whatever, and then you can either say, leave me alone. I need some time to work. But I think the right way to approach it would be, I need to work. I know you have some free time . So go ahead and find something else that you are interested in doing that brings you joy, that interests you. Let's, let's have a list of what you can come up. As a project for the following days, and then you can support and bring whatever else they need. But you know, in this scenario, you set a time boundary where, you need to work. They need to entertain themself. And at the same time, you're supportive. You are being supportive of the process. And if they need, for example, they wanna do this crazy doll model or a car model, then you will help them bring the material. But they are the one that can do it by themself. And again, I'm talking in regard to older kids. We're two, three years old. Yes, you do need to be around them most of the time watching them, making sure they're not climbing, not opening anything, cuz their curiosity and their perspective taking is not developed. So it's your responsibility to make sure they're safe. Okay, so let's take last example around emotional boundary. For example, if one of your kids is saying, I'm so sad. My brother just said something mean to me. There's one way to approach it and say, To the sibling. Yeah. How could you possibly talk to this, to your brother like that? Don't you know it's not acceptable in our house? Or you could say, you know what? We treat respectfully each other here in our house, so Please rephrase whatever you wanted to say in a kind way so you see, again, you're not invalidating whatever the sibling wanted to say, cuz it could be that he was hurt himself. But anyway, I. You make the point of this is not the way we communicate with each other, and you let them practice again. I am doing it all the time with my ketos. if they whine or cry, I would say, I can't understand you when you talk like that. Let's practice how you talk with no whining and no crying because I'm listening, I want to hear whatever you wanna say. So again, it's not only to set the boundary, but it's also to guide our kids of how to communicate effectively and use not the passive way not the aggressive way, but the assertive way and last reminder. It's always about how we model our children, so please ask yourself, do I really communicate in an assertive way, or do I let my anger and my own madness to manifest when I'm talking to my child? So that's it for today. As a reminder, we talked about three types of communication style, the passive way, which if your child is being a passive, your role as a parent is actually to help him advocate for himself and speak up to go towards the assertive way. the other thing is aggressive communication, which sometimes I think about it, in a graphic way. It's like a child that tend to be aggressive is like a square that you want to curve their vertex, so you want to make it more like a circle to communicate more smoothly and softly. And then the passive child is more of like an oval that you want to sharpen the ages to make it. More a assertively. So I hope that image helps you. and I would love to hear, your feedback around the podcast. if you think about any topics you wish the podcast to cover, please me a message you can find. A link to leave me a message in the show notes., And Leslie, if you need diving into what's going on for you and your life and your kids, . Please book your free. Call with me. I would love to get to know you better and see if we can work together. So as usual, treat yourself and your kids with compassion and curiosity. See you. Bye.